Archive for January, 2010

From the Texas GOP. I expect more of this as Lib states fail and conservative states thrive (or at least, do better.):

AUSTIN — The Democratic left is opening up several online fronts from which they will attack the Texas record this election year. Posing as non-partisan civic watchdogs, their aim is to produce material that becomes fodder for posts on Democratic-allied blogs and, eventually, stories in the mainstream press in Texas. For instance, Texans for Public Justice, a leftwing group that receives funding from liberal interests and foundations like the Open Society Institute, this week published a baseless online report claiming that the Texas Enterprise Fund is suffering from its own “recession.” This, in spite of the fact that Texas is the nation’s leading job creator. Unlike the Obama Administration’s so called stimulus that created “jobs” in fake districts, the state of Texas holds companies to strict contracts, rewarding successful job creation, through the Texas Enterprise Fund.

“These leftwing noise factories are trying to do what the voters of Texas have repeatedly rejected over the past several years: Empower liberal Democrats by tearing down Texas’ conservative success story,” said Republican Party of Texas Communications Director Bryan Preston. “There are several of these shady groups out there – Matt Angle’s Lone Star Project, this Texans for Public Justice, wherever you turn over a rock you find one of them. They spin tales attacking the state’s successes or its leaders, in the hope of winning power for their Democrat allies by default since the Democrats in Texas have no actual ideas or record to run on. But we’re on to them and their slimy tactics won’t work.”

Texans for Public Justice receives funding from the aforementioned leftwing Tides Foundation. It also receives funding from the Open Society Institute, which is funded by the George Soros Foundation Network. TPJ is therefore a part of the larger far left Soros effort that includes leftwing Media Matters for America and the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress, both based in Washington.

Angle’s Lone Star Project, based in Washington, DC, is funded primarily by the Texas Democratic Trust, a liberal foundation funded by the Baron estate. It funds Angle as well as the Texas Democratic Party. That estate made headlines in 2008 when the Dallas Morning News reported that Dallas lawyer Fred Baron used his fortune in 2007 to help former North Carolina Senator and former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards cover up his extramarital affair with a videographer – an affair that produced a daughter, which Edwards only recently acknowledged fathering. She is two years old. Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, was suffering from cancer at the time of the affair, and continues fighting the disease to this day. Baron passed away in 2008 but his estate continues funding Democrat operations in Texas.

So, when Obama asks Republicans to be bipartisan, he is asking them to make a very bad personal, political, and professional choice. Working with Democrats would require Republicans to give up a working political strategy. It would increase the chance that these same Republican senators would loss their jobs. It would also help Obama and the Democrats look good, more centrist, and very effective. The result of helping Democrats look good would probably be to prolong the amount of time Republicans spend in the minority.

Obama acknowledges that it would be very stupid for Republican to work with Democrats. Even after saying that being bipartisan would put Republican senators’ jobs in jeopardy, he honestly expects them to want to work with him.

Yes, well. There’s also the fact that Republicans are on very firm ground because the American people hate every piece of proposed legislation.

Even political dumbells can read opinion polls and see that “bipartisanship”, i.e. supporting unpopular legislation, would be suicide.

But don’t rule Republican suicide. Their impulse is to work across the aisle and make deals. Holding the line causes them psychic pain. Guys like Lyndsey Graham and John McCain and Olympia Snowe want, so badly, to be helpy helpers–the Democrats legislation is just too damn bad to do it.

Remember when President Obama ripped lobbyists in the State of the Union Speech? Well, a day later The Hill reports:

A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.

The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.

The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.”

I’d feel worse for some of these folks, if they didn’t jump on the Obama bandwagon so early and so vigorously. Anyone watching his campaigning knew he wasn’t going to be a friend to business and yet business bought him.

Also, this should be a warning to Insurance Companies and Pharma. Newsflash morons: when this is all over, you’ll be cast aside, put out of business. You’re being used to create a “framework” for Single Payer.

Remember when President Obama ripped lobbyists in the State of the Union Speech? Well, a day later The Hill reports:

A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.

The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.

The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.”

I’d feel worse for some of these folks, if they didn’t jump on the Obama bandwagon so early and so vigorously. Anyone watching his campaigning knew he wasn’t going to be a friend to business and yet business bought him.

Also, this should be a warning to Insurance Companies and Pharma. Newsflash morons: when this is all over, you’ll be cast aside, put out of business. You’re being used to create a “framework” for Single Payer.

President Obama indulged himself multiple times throughout his speech. Two indulgences actually elicited outraged and/or stony reaction from those he targeted.

First, the Supreme Court. President Obama opined about the separation of powers and then he launched. Here’s how Allah characterizes it :

When you hear the president of the United States demagoging the First Amendment, you sit there and you take it, son.

I was U-streaming during the speech at that time and was stunned. I asked the listeners the question that Randy Barnett asked (via Instapundit):

In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked.

My second question after this nonsense was, “Who the hell does this guy think he is?” To my mind, he is just a President. He is a man like any other. He will come and go and grow and fade like any other President. We have Carter, Clinton, Bush I and GW Bush walking the planet like men. Former presidents, certainly. Worthy of respect for holding the office, definitely. Still, they are men.

Barack Obama is just a man. He diminishes himself and the office of the Presidency by being so disrespectful to another branch of the government.

President Obama has taken heat from gays because he’s basically told them to wait their turn–mostly because any gay special rights issues tick off Americans. That President Obama spoke of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell last night tells me two things:

One, he knows that it will irritate Americans generally and military-types specifically, but figures he has nothing to lose.

Two, he thinks gay people are stupid. He knows that what he blabs about may or may not change anything, but saying something is symbolic. Liberals love symbolic. He cares. Or at least he’s hoping that works. It worked for Clinton.

President Obama ain’t President Clinton.

Lying came to Bill Clinton like bacon to, well, any food, but Obama’s prevarications, cast in the hauteur of John Kerry does not work. It just pisses people off.

Or so one might think, but what do I know? As to the possibility that we are embarking on this social experiment in war time because Obama dropped the ball on health care and needs to play to his base, well, I’m sure the politics had nothing to do with this and Obama is motivated exclusively by his belief that this is the Right Thing To Do. In any case, talk is cheap – let’s see whether Obama pushes to get this done, or blames mysterious forces and Evil Republicans (who control the Senate by 41-59) when nothing happens.

The Generals on the front row (not unlike the Supreme Court) sat, stony-faced while President Obama garnered a standing “O” from the Dem side. They know what the policy will mean for the military.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama asked Congress to repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. I am immensely proud of, and thankful for, every American who wears the uniform of our country, especially at a time of war, and I believe it would be a mistake to repeal the policy.

This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our armed forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.

Code: I’m proud of the gay people serving, too. We are at war. This is a bad idea.

I had no opinion about gays in the military, really, and wondered why it was a big deal. Steve Schippert, a former marine, explained it to me and what it would do for recruiting and cohesion. So, okay.

Here’s the thing: The military is not civilian life. The point is to win wars not change society.

In both the case of the SCOTUS call out and the gays in the military pander, the President made a big mistake. There is only downside for these actions. He has provoked a power equal to his. He has made a promise that it’s doubtful he can keep.

I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It’s interesting; he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two. I mean it’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of the discussion, it was so broad ranging, so in tune with so many problems and aspects and aspects of American life. That you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism and the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard, a very subtle fact. It’s so hard to even talk about it. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it.

It’s pretty clear that Chris Matthews is kinda losing it these days. Still, I think I know what he’s saying. One just has to think like a liberal to get it.

Guys like Chris Matthews, identity politics guys, see everything through the lens of race. The president was the First Black President more than he was the best President for the U.S.

For hippies, Barack Obama was a racial symbol. They wanted to see tangible, physical, brown-skinned, or ovaried (but that comes second in identity politics–ladies, wait your turn and by the way, be liberal) human in charge. The skin tone mattered first.

Last night, Chris Matthews stopped being race-focused and he started actually listening to the message.

The funny thing is that nearly all those who didn’t vote for Barack Obama heard the message two years ago. They didn’t see race first. They saw a man with whom they disagreed.

Who is racist here?

That doesn’t mean that there still aren’t people who are racist or sexist or ageist or, in the case of a lot of women, painfully jealous of a woman more beautiful than she; there are “ist” people. People discriminate. It’s what they do.

For guys like Chris Matthews who exclude or include purely on skin color, finally hearing the message is revelatory.

Chris Matthews admits to a phenomenon that’s probably happening all across America: He’s finally hearing the message and not getting lost in the “light-skinned, negro” package as Harry Reid would say.

It’s about time that the identity-politics crowd start seeing Barack Obama as a fully formed human being and not the two-dimensional black card-board cut out hero.

It’s about time these people start looking at their fellow Americans not as some aggrieved minority–for surely that view diminishes the human being and strips him or her of her humanity and individuality. The aggrieved minority is not so much a person as a “black person” with all the prejudices that a white guy like Chris Matthews applies.

Maybe now, the racists on the left can start seeing what most Americans saw when they see Barack Obama: A man like any other.

So, I’ll be live blogging over at Right Wing News and here at my blog. I’ll try embedding the code for the U-stream too. This is new to me. We’ll see how it goes.

Also, if we can make it work, Tab Hale will be doing a simulcast and for sure live blogging on Right Wing News. She’s a braver soul, so if we make this video stuff work, it will be her win, most likely.

Hawkins will be live Tweeting for ABC news, I think.

There will be a whole lot of new media going on tonight…but mostly drinking while doing new media.

The President has a four-year, no-cut contract. In the words of Andrew Marvell, he has “world enough and time.” But members of the House are on the ballot in 10 months. If his majority is to survive, he needs to do three things: attack, attack, attack.

Is it just me or does this strategy sound exactly wrong given the populaces’ mood?

Give the voters the key. Strap on the chastity belt and let legislators go to town—writing legislation that cuts spending.

If a legislator gets so much as close to a big government program or sidles up to a entitlement in the form of state, business, bank or individual bailouts, shock ’em with a cattle-prod like shock. (Okay, so that’s a little extra….and maybe more painful than an actual chastity belt.)

Conservative members of the Republican National Committee have submitted two different proposals at their Winter Meeting this week that would prevent party money from being given to GOP candidates who are deemed too moderate.

One of the measures – the so-called “purity resolution” that was first circulated in November and drew criticism from Republicans who want to broaden the party’s appeal – would deny RNC support to candidates who fail to adhere to at least eight of 10 conservative principles.

A second, less-stringent proposal has also been submitted for consideration at the meeting, which began Wednesday at a beachfront resort in Honolulu.

Man, I hate these sorts of things. They aren’t very useful. A guy like Scott Brown would unlikely pass the “test” or else, if he did, it would because of some dancing around the strict meaning of the test.

Can’t we just invoke the rule I give for being on Twitter, aka, “Don’t be an idiot”? I mean, Republican should mean fiscal conservatism which should mean not being a big spending dolt.

What does being a Republican mean, if it doesn’t mean that?

UPDATED:

A reader pointed out that we should have Legislators castrated since they’re the offending party. Voters need chastity belts, I guess.